WhatsApp bans over 16 lakh accounts in India in April
WhatsApp had banned nearly 18 lakh accounts in the month of March and 14.26 lakh in February. A total of 18.58 lakh Indian accounts were banned in January
Messaging platform WhatsApp banned over 16 lakh accounts of Indian users in the month of April, according to the company's monthly disclosure report published on Wednesday.
Out of the total, 122 accounts were banned based on user complaints while 16.66 lakh accounts were barred to prevent harmful activity on the app, said the Facebook-owned messaging app.
"We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred," the WhatsApp report said.
According to the WhatsApp framework, the app bans an account when it is confident that the user is abusive.
"Our goal is to identify and stop abusive accounts as quickly as possible, which is why identifying these accounts manually is not realistic. Instead, we have advanced machine learning systems that take action to ban accounts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," the report said.
The company said it bans the account in several cases, including when an account accumulates negative feedback, such as when other users submit reports or block the account.
The report also said that the app's systems evaluate the account and take appropriate action after negative feedback is reported.
The instant mobile messaging firm uses machine learning and other analytical tools to detect "highly-motivated abusers" and ban them from the platform.
The company had banned nearly 18 lakh accounts in the month of March and 14.26 lakh in February. A total of 18.58 lakh Indian accounts were banned in January.
Prior to that, 20.79 lakh Indian accounts were banned by WhatsApp in December 2021 and 17.5 lakh in November.
The new IT rules — which came into effect last year — require large digital platforms (with over 50 lakh users) to publish compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.
Previously, WhatsApp had emphasised that being an end-to-end encrypted platform, it has no visibility into the content of any messages.
Besides the behavioural signals from accounts, it relies on available unencrypted information, including user reports, profile photos, group photos and descriptions as well as advanced AI tools and resources to detect and prevent abuse on its platform, it had said.
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